As a descent player from the DX4 days of old (which ran great BTW), this thread's arguments are just popcorn. It's always the same new "but hi res!!" "but 60fps!!!" pattern.

Anyway yeah, ISA generally got deprecated ever since AC'97 was proposed. The writing was already on the wall in 1997, much like DOS games were. You didn't "need" an ISA soundcard to keep up with the mainstream PC games in 98, unless you're really a Bethesda and/or WizardWorks fan, or really want that strange AWE-exclusive soundfont in FF7PC...

leileilol wrote on 2020-02-01, 04:13:

As a descent player from the DX4 days of old (which ran great BTW), this thread's arguments are just popcorn. It's always the same new "but hi res!!" "but 60fps!!!" pattern.

Anyway yeah, ISA generally got deprecated ever since AC'97 was proposed. The writing was already on the wall in 1997, much like DOS games were. You didn't "need" an ISA soundcard to keep up with the mainstream PC games in 98, unless you're really a Bethesda and/or WizardWorks fan, or really want that strange AWE-exclusive soundfont in FF7PC...

Being that gaming isn't necessary for our survival, a sound card isn't in all likelihood necessary for most of us either. We can factually discuss what a hypothetical high end DOS machine can and can't do, but whether you, I, or anyone else want to own and use one is really a personal judgement call.

In summary for the OP, there are DOS games that push even Athlon or P4 systems at high resolution, they're usually easier to configure with an explicitly supported ISA card, and these games are fairly uncommon. There are also a handful of games that make explicit use of the onboard synthesis engine of AWE32/64 cards. The forum has extensive discussion on both topics if you're interested.